Experiment 25 (2019) 328-345 brill.com/expt Artists at Play Natalia Erenburg, Iakov Tugendkhold, and the Exhibition of Russian Folk Art at the “Salon d’Automne” of 1913 Anna Winestein Executive Director, Ballets Russes Arts Initiative, and Associate, Davis Center at Harvard University and Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University [email protected] Abstract The exhibition of Russian folk art at the Paris “Salon d’Automne” of 1913 has been gen- erally overlooked in scholarship on folk art, overshadowed by the “All-Russian Kustar Exhibitions” and the Moscow avant-garde gallery shows of the same year. This article examines the contributions of its curator, Natalia Erenburg, and the project’s instiga- tor, Iakov Tugendkhold, who wrote the catalogue essay and headed the committee— both of whom were artists who became critics, historians, and collectors. The article elucidates the show’s rationale and selection of exhibits, the critical response to it and its legacy. It also discusses the artistic circles of Russian Paris in which the project origi- nated, particularly the Académie russe. Finally, it examines the project in the context of earlier efforts to present Russian folk art in Paris, and shows how it—and Russian folk art as a source and object of collecting and display—brought together artists, collec- tors, and scholars from the ranks of the Mir iskusstva [World of Art] group, as well as the younger avant-gardists, and allowed them to engage Parisian and European audi- ences with their own ideas and artworks. Keywords “Salon d’Automne” – Natalia Erenburg – Iakov Tugendkhold – Russian folk art – Paris – Mir iskusstva – Mikhail Larionov – Academie russe Overshadowed by both the “All-Russian Kustar Exhibitions” of 1902 and 1913 in St. Petersburg, and the shows of avant-garde artists’ collections in Moscow in © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/2211730X-12341346Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:48:02AM via free access Artists at Play 329 the early 1910s, the exhibition of Russian folk art at the Paris “Salon d’Automne” of 1913 has been generally overlooked in scholarship on collecting and display of narodnoe iskusstvo [folk art].1 This article addresses this gap, examining the artistic circles where the project originated, earlier efforts to present Russian folk art in Paris, the show’s rationale and selection of particular works, from private and public collections, as well as the critical response to it and its leg- acy. Furthermore, it looks at the motivations and contributions of the two key forces behind the endeavor—the artist and future folk-art historian, Natalia Erenburg, who was the curator and administrator of the show, and the artist- turned-critic Iakov Tugendkhold who was the project’s instigator, wrote the catalogue’s essay, and headed the committee (fig. 1).2 The article also explores how the show, and Russian folk art as a source and object of collecting and display, brought together artists, collectors, and scholars from the ranks of the Mir iskusstva [World of Art] group, as well as the younger avant-gardists, and allowed them to engage Parisian and European audiences with their own ideas and artworks. The first presentation of folk art by a Paris-based Russian artist society took place in May 1904 under the auspices of the Russkii artisticheskii kruzhok [Russian Artistic Circle, also known as the “Union of Russian Artists”] (RAK) in Montparnasse. A group of mostly women artists and philanthropists— among them the painter-printmaker Elizaveta Kruglikova, her studio partner Elizaveta Davidenko, and the translator Aleksandra Golshtein—had founded the RAK a year earlier and rented a studio and club space that could also be used as a gallery. Kruglikova selected the core of the show from Russian em- broidery and dyed towels collected by Golshtein’s artist daughter-in-law, the recently deceased Maria Vasilievna Iakunchikova. Some had already been fea- tured in the Russian pavilion at the 1900 “Exposition Universelle,” for which 1 The show receives less than a page in Wendy Salmond’s thorough volume Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Most other publications omit it entirely while allotting extensive space or entire chapters to the aforementioned exhibitions, such as in Sarah Warren’s vol- ume, Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013; Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Ludmila Piters-Hofmann’s article in this issue dis- cusses the “Second All-Russian Kustar Exhibition” of 1913. 2 Iakov Tugendkhold, “Preface,” (308-13) for “L’art populaire russe dans l’image, le jouet, le pain d’épice; Exposition organisée par Mme Nathalie Ehrenbourg” (314-20), in Salon d’Automne, Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure, architecture et art décoratif: ex- posés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées du 15 novembre 1913 au 5 janvier 1914 (Paris: Salon d’Automne, 1913). Experiment 25 (2019) 328-345 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:48:02AM via free access 330 Winestein FIGURE 1 L’art populaire russe dans l’image, le jouet, le pain d’épice, etc., reproduced in the folk art exhibition’s list of works within the “Salon d’Automne” catalogue of 1913, 314-15 Iakunchikova herself had organized the first display of Russian handicrafts.3 Davidenko obtained additional items in Russia that were offered for purchase at the 1904 show; these sold out within five days and netted half of the studio’s 3 Mikhail Kiselev, “Mariia Iakunchikova i russkii modern,” Nashe nasledie 54 (2000), http:// www.nasledie-rus.ru/podshivka/5404.php [accessed March 17, 2019]. Louise Hardiman’s ar- ticle in this issue discusses Iakunchikova’s participation in the “Exposition Universelle” of 1900. ExperimentDownloaded 25from (2019) Brill.com09/27/2021 328-345 05:48:02AM via free access Artists at Play 331 annual rent.4 The project received attention both from French artists and the press. The embroidery, as well as the Circle’s ideas, caught the interest of sculp- tor and ceramicist Pierre Roche, a passionate advocate for decorative art. In late May he invited the RAK to showcase Russian decorative art in the fall 1904 salon of the Société des artistes décorateurs (SAD) at the Petit Palais.5 A com- mittee sent inquiries to collectors including Savva Mamontov, Sergei Morozov, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov, and Princess Maria Tenisheva, and artists such as Aleksandr Golovin and Sergei Maliutin. Kruglikova approached various zemstva [local governments] that stockpiled and distributed regional handi- crafts; another artist, Boris Matveev, wrote home to Ukraine requesting na- tive crafts from Crimean Tatar villages. Tenisheva promptly agreed, and so by late June, the show was being planned around items from her holdings and Iakunchikova’s collection.6 Casting a wide net, Golshtein obtained permission to choose from unsold remnants from the Russian folk art exhibits at the inter- national “Exposition d’Hygiène” at the Grand Palais in September 1904, includ- ing display vitrines and furniture. According to committee member Stepan Iaremich, “There is a fable that everyone is so interested in everything Russian that it flies out the door.”7 In fact, the Mir iskusstva artist and budding art his- torian complained further in the same letter that French visitors had bought little of the ugly, overpriced, and mostly factory-made folk art on display. After the SAD salon itself was canceled, Roche proposed presenting the show at the spring “Salon de Champ du Mars.” Cost concerns prevented the participation of several prospective lenders, such as Moscow-based Maria Fedorovna Iakunchikova, but by January 1905 the RAK planned to collabo- rate with Tenisheva and Prince Shcherbatov.8 When civil unrest in Russia disrupted their plans, Roche postponed his invitation to the spring of 1906.9 By then, however, internal strife had destabilized the RAK and the effort 4 Boris Matveev, letter to his mother Lidiia Matveeva, May 19, 1904, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI) f. 801 op. 1, ed. khr. 9, l. 10 verso. 5 “Otchet Russkogo Artisticheskogo Kruzhka v Parizhe za vtoroi god ego suschestvovaniia (1904/5)” (Paris, 1905) (henceforth 1905 Report), Gosudarstvennyi Russkii Muzei (GRM), f. 25, ed. khr. 249, l. 1. 6 Boris Matveev, letter to his sister Maria Matveeva, June 24, 1904, RGALI f. 801, op. 1, ed. khr. 8, l. 67-67v. 7 Stepan Iaremich, letter to Alexandre Benois, September 1904, repr. in Stepan Petrovich Iaremich, 3 vols., ed. Vitalii Tretiakov and Ivan Vydrin (St. Petersburg: Sad iskusstv, 2005-09), 3: 66-67. 8 Elizaveta Kruglikova, letter to Aleksandra Golshtein, early January 1905, Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (Bakhmeteff Archive), Coll/Gol’shtein, box 3. 9 1905 Report, 2. Experiment 25 (2019) 328-345 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:48:02AM via free access 332 Winestein stalled completely. That fall, Sergei Diaghilev organized his famous show at the Salon d’Automne, to which Tenisheva refused to lend, but which included, alongside traditional artworks, embroideries from the artist Maria Vasilievna Iakunchikova’s collection, works by Maliutin from the Talashkino workshops, and items from Sergiev Posad.10 Tenisheva pushed ahead independently, and from May to October 1907, 6000 items from her collection were shown at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, receiving a record attendance of 78,000 people.11 The 1913 exhibition was not, as some think, an official project of the Académie russe (Societé des artistes russes), a very fluid group that changed its name, priorities, and leadership almost every year between 1909 and 1914. It was, however, a project that was spearheaded by several of its members and which represented a natural outgrowth of their activities and interests.